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What the gay-straight alliance debate means for Alberta going forward

EDMONTON—Gay-straight alliances in Alberta are once again a political lightning rod and were the centrepiece of a tumultuous debate for the new United Conservative government when it passed its education bill last week.

The act makes changes around gay-straight alliances (or GSAs) in schools, like removing the word “immediately” regarding when a principal has to set up a GSA after being asked, and rolling back Bill 24, which stated teachers weren’t to inform parents if their child was in a GSA.

Rhetoric from both sides of the aisle has been loud and, at times, confusing. The Opposition NDP has spread the notion that the government is trying to out LGBTQ students who join GSAs, which are safe spaces where they and their allies get together to support each other.

On the other hand, the United Conservatives have defended their policies by saying Alberta would still have the strongest protections for GSAs in Canada and that existing privacy legislation would keep students from being outed — except in extreme circumstances where there’s a chance of harm. This argument does hold water, critics and advocates have said, but it also glosses over the fact that the new education policies do roll back existing protections in Alberta.

The Education Amendment Act was passed in the legislature last week after the longest sitting day in Alberta’s history and a marathon 40-hour debate, which dealt almost entirely with GSAs and protections for the LGBTQ community.

The legislation made waves across the country and even piqued the interest of the Washington Post, which published an article looking at the move by Alberta’s new government.

Below is a wide-angle look at what happened, the forces behind it, and where the conversation goes next.

What exactly is changing

At the heart of the move is the government’s rollback of Bill 24 — a piece of legislation that was brought in by the New Democrats in 2017 that stated teachers couldn’t notify parents if their child was in a GSA. It was done to protect students who may have been facing unsupportive environments at home when it came to their sexuality.

This was done after the previous Progressive Conservative government brought in Bill 10, which enshrined the stipulation that schools had to allow the clubs if students wanted them.

But it was seen as flimsy, explained Duane Bratt, a political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, and it was apparent that some private religious schools and public Catholic schools were finding loopholes, which Bill 24 plugged.

“The biggest one was how long it would take (to set up a GSA),” Bratt said.

Some schools would delay the setting up of a GSA, if a student asked, for years, he said. So the NDP government introduced Bill 24, which said a principal had to immediately set up a GSA.

When asked why the government removed the immediacy clause in the new legislation, Colin Aitchison, press secretary for Alberta’s education minister, said, “Once requested by a student, it is not optional for a principal to allow their creation. It must be allowed.”

But without the clause explicitly in the legislation, principals could still drag their feet, critics and the Opposition NDP have said.

The NDP and the UCP debate

The United Conservatives have chastised the New Democrats for a “fear and smear” campaign — harking back to the spring election campaign where the same charge was levelled against them. They claim that the Opposition is causing division among the electorate by misrepresenting facts around the policies in the new education act.

The NDP tried to introduce several amendments to the new education bill — writing in a two-week timeline for principals in getting a GSA set up, making it so LGBTQ staff and teachers couldn’t be fired based on being part of the community, and ensuring policies around GSAs were the same for public and private schools.

The UCP rejected all of them, and Bratt said it’s unclear to him if the policies will be a political pitfall for the United Conservatives in the future.

“We don’t know what their calculation was on that,” he said.

“Whether they just determined that they could make changes in social policy and it wouldn’t matter because of the economic message, or these are firmly held beliefs by social conservatives that make up an important part of the UCP government.”

Where the opposition to GSAs comes from

Recently spearheading opposition to Bill 24 was the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, representing about two dozen faith-based schools, advocacy groups and parents. The group launched an injunction in April 2018 to suspend Bill 24 — calling GSAs “ideological sexual clubs” — but the appellants were struck down by Alberta’s highest court earlier this year.

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Bridget Stirling, a PhD student who has done extensive research on GSAs, said that the side that opposes protections like those in Bill 24 comes from a place of support for religious and parental rights.

“Albertans, as a whole, are not nearly as polarized on this as it seems,” said Stirling, who also serves as an Edmonton public school trustee. “This is a small but very loud and very politically influential group who are pushing these very socially conservative policies forward.”

It’s a deep issue when trying to balance LGBTQ rights with parental rights, explained Stirling, and she expects more court battles over GSAs in the future. The privacy legislation that the United Conservatives have said will still protect students from being outed — the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection Act — is mostly untested in court, she said.

“Until it touches the courts, you don’t know for sure.”

The socially conservative right has some sway over the United Conservatives, said Bratt, pointing to Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, who, he said, has been critical of GSAs in the past, before she was elected.

“When you put one of those critics as the education minister, you can understand why students, teachers, schools are concerned — or very pleased, depending on what side of the debate they’re on,” he said.

Students galvanized, and what happens next

Just days after the United Conservatives took power on April 16, students began organizing protests to the new government’s expected changes around the school clubs. In early May, hundreds of Alberta students walked out of class in support of GSAs.

Bratt said the UCP government pinned the backlash that was stirred up — as well as other protests that took place during the election — on the NDP.

“The UCP believe that they were ginned up by the NDP. I’m not convinced of that,” he said, and explained that they seemed like more of a grassroots reaction.

Now that the policies have officially made their way through the legislature, Michael Green, executive director of LGBTQ advocacy group altView, said it’s going to throw uncertainty into the minds of students.

“Some are scared, but it’s more along the lines of — they’re just unsure,” he said.

But Green took solace in the fact that the LGBTQ community has faced obstacles in the past and is primed to take community care matters into its own hands when it sees a government that’s perceived as unsupportive.

“That’s the movement that I think is one to watch over the next few months, is that grassroots level of community-based care,” he said.

Still, Green said if unfortunate stories start cropping up — like teachers being fired for their sexual orientation or kids being outed — he expects the public would be galvanized again, and they’d take to the streets to protest.

“I’m worried that our province is aligning itself on the wrong side of history more than they are aligning themselves with the interests of the side of rights,” he said.

“Not supporting LGBTQ2S+ youth and teachers is probably going to come back and haunt them in the long run.”

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